The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight an update of the search for answers to the Swissair tragedy; a two-part look at how the Internet is changing the workplace, Paul Solman reports from Silicon Alley in New York City and Phil Ponce runs a four-way discussion; then comes a report on economic bad times in South Korea; a David Gergen dialogue about community healing, and a Robert Pinsky poem for Labor Day. It all follows our summary of the news this holiday Monday.% ? NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: There were developments today in the investigation of the Swissair 111 crash. A signal from the submerged cockpit voice recorder of the plane was detected. Canadian Navy officials said the transmission was picked up by a submarine that was searching the Atlantic Ocean floor off the coast of Nova Scotia. The jetliner crashed there Wednesday, killing all 229 people on board. Divers recovered the plane's flight data recorder Sunday. It's being analyzed for clues as to why the plane went down. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. The Russian parliament again refused to confirm a new prime minister today, handing President Yeltsin another setback. We have a report from Gaby Rado of Independent Television News.

GABY RADO, ITN: In the Kremlin some of Boris Yeltsin's most bitter enemies gathered for round table talks to try and escape from Russia's political maze. Victor Chernomyrdin, the President's choice for prime minister, tried to make friends that didn't appear to improve his chances of being confirmed tonight. There was at least some respect shown for President Yeltsin when he arrived, but he proved his back was against the wall by offering a review after six months, if parliament voted his man in. The debate on that came alive when the leader of the Communist Party compared the anger and despair in the country to that immediately before the Bolshevik Revolution.

GENNADY ZYUGANOV, Communist Party Leader: [speaking through interpreter] We believe that the situation today is reminiscent of January 1917. The hatred for the Czar and his court, headed by Rasputin, is similar to that felt against Yeltsin, Chernomyrdin, Berezovsky, and the rest of the puppet masters.

GABY RADO: To that, the beleaguered Mr. Chernomyrdin pointed out that it was the Bolsheviks and Communists who ruined the country by the early 90's. And then he lost his temper. "Enough," he said, "Enough." When it came, the vote was almost as humiliating a rejection as last week's. Members are due to vote for a third and final time next week. If there's another rebuff, parliament will be dissolved.

JIM LEHRER: The ruble fell so fast today that trading for dollars was canceled in Moscow. The official rates were 17 rubles to the dollar on Friday, 20 rubles today. Thirty rubles to the dollar has already been agreed to in some exchanges set for tomorrow. Elsewhere in the world Asian markets showed strong gains today. Japan's yen climbed to a four-month high of 132 to the dollar, and its principal stock index was up more than 5 percent. Hong Kong's index closed up nearly 8 percent. U.S. markets were closed for the Labor Day holiday. In Africa today a temporary settlement was reached in the civil war of the democratic republic of the Congo. President Frederick Chiluba of Zambia announced the agreement after a summit of leaders from seven African nations in Zimbabwe. The proposal called for an immediate cease-fire and troop standstill until a lasting deal could be achieved. Congo President Laurent Kabila and rebel forces have been fighting since early August. The rebels now control a quarter of the country. And back in this country in baseball today Mark McGwire did it. The St. Louis Cardinals first baseman tied Roger Maris's homerun record of 61 in a single season. His homer came in the first inning against the Chicago Cubs in St. Louis.

SPORTS ANNOUNCER: Four children. Pat Maris, the widow of Roger Maris, had to be hospitalized upon arrival. That ball is gone and it's clear! It is a homerun! [fans cheering wildly] Number 61! He has tied Maris! [wild uproar and fireworks going off in stadium]

JIM LEHRER: The Cubs' Sammy Sosa is also in the homerun race. He's three behind McGwire, with 58. The teams play again tomorrow. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to a Swissair crash update, a two-part report on the changing workplace, bad times in South Korea, a David Gergen dialogue, and a Labor Day poem.% ? UPDATE - SWISSAIR CRASH

JIM LEHRER: Phil Ponce has the Swissair story.

PHIL PONCE: The recovery of one of the two black boxes from Swissair Flight 111 was the first major breakthrough for crash investigators.

MICHAEL POOLE, Canadian Transportation Safety Board: It's in much better condition than we expected. The small things that we've been recovering to date - we're, I would say, fearing the worst - but it actually looks in extremely good condition. And we're optimistic the internal memory module will be intact.

PHIL PONCE: The recorder should provide more than 100 pieces of technical information, such as altitude, speed, and engine status, that could help the inquiry into what caused the crash that killed all 229 on board. The data recorder was flown to a laboratory in Ottawa for examination. And today more progress -- as Canadian navy searchers, working in 190-foot waters picked up signals from the second black box, the cockpit voice recorder still underwater. The voice recorder should reveal other noises in the cockpit, other than the pilot's conversation with controllers. Divers also discovered three large pieces of wreckage believed to be the plane's fuselage, the main body of the MD-11 jetliner. Recovery of the fuselage could lead to the recovery of more bodies. Meanwhile, those who lost loved ones on the flight are still gathered on the Nova Scotia coast. Memorial services were held at local churches over the weekend, and the village's lighthouse has become a makeshift memorial of flowers and wreaths in honor of those who died. Volunteers continue to counsel the grieving.

SPOKESMAN: What we have is a story of all of the people out there being affected by all of the kinds of things they're being exposed to. Their reactions are many and the same, and one of the things that we emphasize to them and to you is that all of these are normal reactions of normal people doing a very difficult task in an abnormal circumstance.

PHIL PONCE: Today, officials were not able to identify any additional remains. Identification is difficult because of the force with which the airliner hit the water. The body of one passenger, a French woman, was identified late Friday and released. There is no official count of how many bodies have been recovered, but authorities have indicated that most remain in the sea. In an effort to assist in the recovery of large aircraft parts, the U.S. has deployed Navy salvage and rescue ship, the U.S.S. Grapple from its home port in Philadelphia. The Grapple, carrying equipment capable of lifting three hundred tons, assisted in the deep sea investigation of TWA Flight 800 in 1996. The ship is expected to reach Nova Scotia on Wednesday. Late this afternoon, another update.

VIC GERDEN, Canadian Transportation Safety Board: We now know that there is a good likelihood that we will have good data from the flight data recorder, but it is limited to approximately 10,000 feet and above. There is no information on the flight data recorder for the portion of the flight below 10,000 feet.

REPORTER: Does it limit your ability to draw certain conclusions, knowing that you don't have those 100 parameters after the 10,000-foot level?

VIC GERDEN: Again, what we are trying to do is find out what the cause of this accident was, the contributing factors, any safety deficiencies that may have been involved, and there is a strong possibility that we may - we may be able to do that with the information that we have already. But we look forward to having additional information so that we can make a better picture - paint a better picture, a consolidated picture of what was going on, and, indeed, even below 10,000 feet there may be other information that can be used. And until we really assess all of it, it's premature to make conclusions at this point. And it's unfair.

PHIL PONCE: Officials said bad weather is expected to delay deep diving for the next day and a half.% ? FOCUS - NET WORK

JIM LEHRER: On this Labor Day a two-part look at how the Internet is changing the face of work in America. First, new entrepreneurs on line, reported by our business correspondent Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston.

PAUL SOLMAN: New York, like regions all over the country, has come up with its answer to Silicon Valley. So this is Silicon Alley, in lower Manhattan, where space that once housed sweat shops has been converted for gung-ho enterprises like the Knot. Every day is bring-your-daughter-to-work day for the Knot's founders, David Liu and Carley Roney, NYU film school grads. But the Knot's their baby too. The Knot is an Internet firm, basically, a wedding website, everything you need to "tie the knot" - instant access to more than 5,000 articles, help with budgeting a blessed event, picking the wedding photographer, and the Knot catalogues enough bridal gowns to marry off half of Manhattan. The high-tech partners have sky-high hopes.

DAVID LIU: We're doing something completely unique, never done before, and we're hopefully breaking new ground in what we call traditional media.

PAUL SOLMAN: If manufacturing drove the economy a century go, on factory floors like this, services drive it today. And the hot money in services is on literally thousands of new firms serving up information via computer over the Internet.

DAVID LIU: I mean, everyone is like scrambling to try to get links and exposure and get their brand out there.

PAUL SOLMAN: Given all the competition, the strategy is rush, rush, rush - to become "the" Internet wedding site before someone else does.

CARLEY RONEY: I'm paging through this, I'm clicking on this -

PAUL SOLMAN: For new mom Carley Roney it means 80-hour weeks, nutrition on the run, forays all over town to lock up new partners. For David Liu, at the moment, it means a flood of resumes and a meeting. There are tons of meetings.

DAVID LIU: Right now, Bill is getting two okays a week from me.

CARLEY RONEY: How are you doing it? Are you doing it -

DAVID LIU: The developers - the developers are coding, the design specs are frozen --

PAUL SOLMAN: These are the new entrepreneurs, creating new firms at all costs, who seem to be driving the U.S. economy.

DAVID LIU: Part of the reason why we're doing this is the exhilaration. I mean, it is the satisfaction that we're creating something from nothing.

CARLEY RONEY: It's basically a bunch of people sitting together, trying to do a job -

DAVID LIU: Killing themselves.

CARLEY RONEY: Yes. Killing themselves to do a job.

PAUL SOLMAN: In the 90's entrepreneurs like these have helped squelch unemployment, stoke the stock market. But their company, like all start-ups, is built on a dream. Suppose it's a pipe dream. Will that turn the economic boom of recent years to dust? That depends on whether firms like these can actually make money. Already, the Knot sells ads that appear on its pages. And it's going all out to lure people to its cybersite, with its chat room, for instance, where advice and anxiety are shared. Joanne Van Vrankin is the Knot's new chat host.

PAUL SOLMAN: Everything was great, and then all of a sudden he's not sure if he wants to get married. It's called cold feet; it'll pass, Quequay says. "I hope so. I've been crying for days." Then what are you going to say? I was going to say the same thing. He'll be okay. That's you. So you're just sort of facilitating the conversation, making her feel better.

JOANNE VAN VRANKIN: If there's a lull, I try to get it going again, try to draw everybody into the chat room.

PAUL SOLMAN: Three new employees started the week we shot, among them, Abby Senzler, being introduced by VP of sales, Rob Casina. Right now, the Knot is spending far more than it's making. So, who's footing the bill? Investors of VC, that is, venture capital. Ann Winblad, one of the country's top VC investors, and Bill Gates' former girlfriend.ANN WINBLAD: A venture capitalist takes money from major corporations and universities and we then look for new companies. We give them money for part of their equity, their shares of ownership, and then we help them grow a big company. What my job is, is every day I get to audition the future.

PAUL SOLMAN: Winblad and her team made a typical VC offer to the Knot: $3 million for some 20 percent of the firm. Other VC firms actually offered somewhat more, but Winblad is known as a winner and has returned 40 percent a year on her investors' versus less than 20 percent for stocks as a whole. So Winblad comes with a whiff of self-fulfilling prophecy. Moreover, says Bill Sahlman of the Harvard Business School -- BILL SAHLMAN, Harvard Business School: If you get her to invest in your company, she's not investing in another potential competitor, and that's a very important part of the process.

PAUL SOLMAN: On the other hand, Internet sites are easy to start. In business-speak there are few barriers to entry in this industry. So there are plenty of competitors, both real and imagined. CARLEY RONEY: They're literally Modern Bride, Wedding Channel and Brides. I mean, Brides is a big question mark. We don't know what they're doing, so we consider them a competitor.

PAUL SOLMAN: It's David Liu's turn to take the baby - his mom will be in later as usual to watch for the rest of the day -- while Carley Roney showed us the key to the firm's success - a website wedding registry, where couples will supposedly register gifts they want and wedding guests will supposedly buy them. The Knot will function as a store and take a cut on every sale. Carley has put great entering into coming up with the right roster of products.

CARLEY RONEY: We basically started with every product possible out there on the market and sort of from there said, okay, what do today's bride and groom really want, and sort of tried to determine different lifestyle bride and grooms. Like there is the sort of adventurous couple, they're always like traveling and going like biking and hiking and things like that. Then there's your sort of more kind of romantic couple that might like stay home and likes to go out to nice dinners and likes to cook together.

PAUL SOLMAN: Finally, there's the casual couple, which might register for glasses like these being shot for the website at a nearby studio. On average, by the way, people spend $75 on a wedding gift. The registry is scheduled to launch soon and is being counted on to provide the bulk of the Knot's revenue. But other wedding websites - it turns out - already have registries. The team needs to persuade the venture capitalists that it's got a better approach, and it needs to persuade itself.

DAVID LIU: I often think that to be a good entrepreneur you have to be very na ve, and you have to say to yourself, I think I can do this; sure, we'll try to do this. And until you actually try to do it, you don't realize what it takes to do it. And as a result, you know, you kind of have to be in a constant state of ignorance - to think that you can do things and roll into it, you have to do it, the survival instinct kicks in and you get the job done.

SPOKESPERSON: I'm here to see David and Carley.

PAUL SOLMAN: The venture capitalists arrive, greeted by a brand new temp filling in at reception.

ANN WINBLAD: David is your CEO.

RECEPTIONIST: David who?

ANN WINBLAD: David - that's David, right there.

PAUL SOLMAN: Ann Winblad, knowing the chaos of start-ups, is unfazed that the receptionist doesn't even know who the CEO is.

RONEY CARLEY: Hi.

ANN WINBLAD: Good to see you. Last time I was here it was bring-your-daughter-to-work day and you had your baby stashed in the back. Is she here today?

RONEY CARLEY: She's actually not here for right now, but not because you were coming.

PAUL SOLMAN: On a whistle-stop tour of her East coast investments Winblad is squeezing lunch in here. Given her experience and contacts, there should be plenty to squeeze out of her, as well. Should they, for example, hold off PR for the official launch of the registry?

ANN WINBLAD: People rarely hold their powder until a launch event because it's too late in case somebody else has declared victory ahead of you. So you've got to leave a lot of bread crumbs on the way to the launch.

PAUL SOLMAN: Winblad's worried that the team doesn't see the big picture. Her mantra: Declare victory from the start.

ANN WINBLAD: You can't wait until you're lined up on the starting line with everyone else and say, hey, look at us, we're going to be the winner. They have to already be told you won before you got there.

PAUL SOLMAN: It's time to unveil the registry. Wedding gifts are a big business, $17 billion a year. But only 10 percent of new businesses make it past the first five years. So VC's like Winblad are taking big risks. No wonder they demand big returns.

ANN WINBLAD: So, on the adventurous one, do you say, if you've never slept in a tent together, don't go into this section?

CARLEY RONEY: Basically yes, things like that.

PAUL SOLMAN: Winblad cares about targeting couples for the registry but mainly because such details affect the prospect of future profits. She's got 20 percent of the Knot's stock, remember, and the promise of profits is the basis of any stock's price. So she's thinking ahead.

ANN WINBLAD: Once we own a customer and their gifts go unfulfilled, do we go back on holidays or anything like that? I mean, can people go back into that and say, gee, you know, Bob and Sue never got that toaster, maybe I'll buy it for Christmas or -

RONEY CARLEY: We get ourselves into discussions like these, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, what are doing? But this is a good question, though.

PAUL SOLMAN: Winblad's long-term perspective runs counter to a common complaint about venture capitalists, that they're vulture capitalists, in it to get a company just far enough to sell their stock in an initial public offering, or IPO, to gullible investors like you and me. To Harvard's Bill Sahlman, though, most VC's are in for the long haul, and that's critical for the economy.

BILL SAHLMAN: You're trying to create companies that 20 years from now people will say thank goodness somebody did that. So if it's Yahoo or Federal Express is a very, very good example - Federal Express took quite a long time -- and if the venture capital community had not been patient, Federal Express wouldn't be here today. And we now take this for granted.

PAUL SOLMAN: Patient investors betting on driven entrepreneurs, who, in turn, live on faith, hope, and venture capital. But wait a second, today's venture capital boom is even greater than that of the 1980's, flooding a market, the Internet, that's yet to prove profitable at all. What about the recent VC disaster, just a decade ago, when a new type of computer disk drive was all the rage and 43 different firms were funded to manufacture it?

BILL SAHLMAN: Each of those 43 venture-backed companies was trying to get 10 percent of the market. It just doesn't work out that way. And eventually you get down to a point where you have two or three viable competitors in an industry.

PAUL SOLMAN: And all the other firms lose, as do their investors. In the disk drive business there were simply more venture capitalists than business opportunity. Is the Internet cycle now cresting?

BILL SAHLMAN: I don't know where we are in the cycle. I can't predict that tomorrow it's all going to come crashing down and be disappointing. But I can say that capital has got a strong head of steam and ultimately will overwhelm opportunity.

ANN WINBLAD: Almost everything is getting funded.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, then doesn't it make you, as a funder, worried that bad things or things that won't pan out are being funded?

ANN WINBLAD: It doesn't make me worry about the companies I invest in, because I am using a lot of discretion. What it makes me worry about is returns for the whole industry will go down, because not all of my colleagues are using discretion, and so our job of raising new money to invest in entrepreneurs may get harder.

PAUL SOLMAN: And that leads to a few final, unanswerable questions. Is the Knot an example of over-optimism, over-investment? Are venture capitalists flocking, like lemmings, to an over-hyped industry, the Internet? Is today's entrepreneurial economy built more on hot air than hard economics? Well, maybe, but to the extent that any business, any economy really, is just effort based on belief, we'll never know unless they try.

JIM LEHRER: More now on all of this in a discussion Phil Ponce recorded last week.

PHIL PONCE: I'm joined by Paul Saffo, a director at Institute for the Future. Based in Silicon Valley, it studies trends in technology and the workplace. Claudia Goldin is a professor of economics at Harvard, and David Roy is a senior ergonomics specialist with the Travelers Property Casualty Insurance Company. He gives companies advice on workplace safety. Welcome home.Mr. Saffo, what has been the impact of the Internet, of computers, of all this information technology on the workplace?

PAUL SAFFO: Well, I think already it's say farewell to 9 to 5, thanks to computers and the globalization process they've helped bring, that nobody gets their work done between 9 and 5 anymore. And conversely, the line between business life and personal life has all but disappeared.

PHIL PONCE: And, as far as where people work, is that another field that's sort of changed?

PAUL SAFFO: Well, we're loosening the coupling between where we work and where we live. The workplace has really turned into a work space, where we still have places we occupy but this additional dimension of cyberspace, and so suddenly you discover that there are people who not only perhaps are working at home, but here in Silicon Valley we have people living halfway around the planet and electronically commuting into work every day to computer companies in San Jose.

PHIL PONCE: Now, Mr. Saffo, not everybody works for a computer company, obviously. What kind of jobs, what kind of fields have been most affected?

PAUL SAFFO: Well, the obvious ones. If you tend to work at a computer screen, you do certainly feel this. But I think the biggest impacts are the ones that are not instantly obvious. The introduction of computers tends to transform industries, so you suddenly discover - to pick a very random example-the advent of the World Wide Web and buying and selling on the web has completely changed the used book business, which used to be this sleepy little business, and now all of a sudden people who have little used bookstores out on Cape Cod are selling their books all over the planet over the Internet.

PHIL PONCE: Is it safe to say, Mr. Saffo, that just about every industry, every field, most people have in some way or another been affected by all this technology?

PAUL SAFFO: I think so. I really think that, for the moment at least, the Internet has become the solvent that is leaching the glue out of our traditional business structures and the very structure of the workplace.

PHIL PONCE: You may it sound as if the Internet is hurting, the way you just put it.

PAUL SAFFO: No. I think it's a positive thing, but I think it was Socrates who observed that all great changes come with hidden curses. There's wonderful benefit in all of this, but with the benefit, comes tremendous uncertainty, and also some people will get hurt.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Goldin, what's happened in the past, benefits and detriments?

CLAUDIA GOLDIN: Well, I think that there were many different lessons in the past and there were benefits and detriments. And I'd like to go back to a period of time, a 20-year period of time, I think, of the IT revolution today --

PHIL PONCE: IT meaning?

CLAUDIA GOLDIN: Information technology, sorry, and the PC, the personal computer revolution being a 20-year period of time. So I'd like to go back - particularly since it's Labor Day and that's a historic day - to the period from 1905 to 1925. And if we go back then and we say, well, what happened to technology then, there were many different revolutions. There was the electricity revolution. And if you think information technology is a revolution, try unplugging everything in your home and see if you can use the Internet. There was also a communications revolution. It was the dawn of radio. And there was a transportation revolution. After all, there was the period of the mass production, the automobile, and there was also a revolution in the office, the first great office revolution. And all of these revolutions changed our lives as workers and as consumers. Most of them bettered our lives, but many people were displaced.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Goldin, how do those changes compare to the change predicted or anticipated by the current changes? I mean, were those more dramatic, are you saying, than the ones we're experiencing now?

CLAUDIA GOLDIN: I would say that they were at least as dramatic and probably even more dramatic. It's very, very difficult to say whether one is more dramatic than the other. I was computing the diffusion of the radio versus the diffusion of the Internet. The Internet has diffused enormously. The latest statistics show that 30 percent of Americans over the age of 16 have plugged into the Internet in the last three months. And that began, of course, at a much, much lower rate ten years ago, and even three years ago, while radio diffused at approximately the same rate.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Roy, looking at people who maybe have what, a traditional workplace, where you go to an office for a certain period of time, how has the physical environment been affected by this technology?

DAVID ROY: Well, the physical environment has been affected tremendously. We really have to look at the paradigm of the seated worker and the fact that the typists of the 1950's used a manual keyboard to actually input the characters into the keyboard and then used the manual return, and when they were finished with a document get up and actually file it. And the computer operator today can do most of these tasks, including dictionary checks and spell checks, and synonyms and antonyms right from the computer, and so we see that technology is drawing us to be really sedentary in front of the computer. And we have to balance those demands with the human capabilities, so although I do believe strongly that the information technology will be a benefit, we must consider the human in the design of the workplace, the work space, and the task itself.

PHIL PONCE: And a point of clarification. Your specialty is ergonomics. What is that?

DAVID ROY: Ergonomics is the science of fitting the task to the person. It's really - it's really balancing the human capabilities with task demands. And if you can in your mind look at the old triple balance where you have work demands on one side and human capabilities on the other, we really have to look at that carefully. And I think that's a major point of consideration for this discussion.

PHIL PONCE: And joining us now is Charley Richardson, who's the director of the technology and work program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. That's a center that looks at how technology affects the work force. Mr. Richardson, what are employees being called upon to do with this new technology that they weren't called upon to do in the past?

CHARLEY RICHARDSON: Well, new technology is changing the very nature of work in literally hundreds of different ways. People - jobs are less secure; they're more movable. People are being monitored all the time on their work -- in their work. People are having to learn new skills constantly. It creates a certain amount of stress or a great deal of stress in the workplace.

PHIL PONCE: Amplify on the stress business. What is causing the stress?

CHARLEY RICHARDSON: Well, there are a number of things that cause the stress. One is that the demands that are placed on people because the technology is sort of constantly watching what they do, the demands that are placed on people just creates a great deal more stress. They have less ability to balance their work throughout the day, and instead of turning in a certain amount of work at the end of the day, they are now being watched, you know, by the minute in terms of how much work they produce. It just - it raises the stress level. I always tell people to think about what it's like to drive with a police officer right behind you. It changes your relaxation, your stress level as you drive.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Richardson, one of the things that technology is presumably supposed to do is to help people be "more productive." Are people being more productive?

CHARLEY RICHARDSON: Well, I think in a lot of cases people are being more productive. The problem is that if you're more productive, than there probably is a need for less of you. And that means that people -- jobs are less secure. People are losing their jobs as jobs are being automated. I mean, give you an example. There used to be somebody that came around and read your electric meter or your water meter. That was a job that people used to get in to higher paying in those companies. Now a van drives by your house at 35 miles an hour and reads every meter on your street. Now we have one or two people doing jobs that used to be done by thirty or forty people.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Saffo, your take on the level of stress and the resultant productivity.

PAUL SAFFO: The danger with computers is that oftentimes the temptation is there to do things with them that just may not make sense at a human level. We do have today the equivalent of factory labor jobs of the last century, and those are tele-operators sitting at computer terminals, taking phone calls, having every key stroke monitored, having their breaks monitored. It's an intellectual tiger cage that I don't think anyone would really want to be in.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Goldin, how did people in the past adjust to the stresses of new technology?

CLAUDIA GOLDIN: Well, in the past, like today, there were many changes. And the best way to adjust is to remain flexible. In an ever-changing world, the object is to be able to change, that employability is the best thing, that what people who did who survived was that they got skills that could be used with the next wave of technology. Let me say that there has always been technological change. There has always been displacement. I really don't think we're going through anything that is unprecedented and unheralded in history.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Saffo, do you see what some people are calling technophobia, the fact that some folks may be intimidated by this new technology?

PAUL SAFFO: There is growing technophobia. Part of it, I think, is Mark Twain's observation, I'm all for progress; it's change I object to. But I'm afraid a big part of it is the fault of the computer industry, that David's business, ergonomics, has had too little attention paid to it. And for the most part, we're building inferior machines that are too difficult to use, that don't suit tasks well and don't suit people well. So what we see as technophobia may just be a very rationale reaction by people who are frustrated by the inferior equipment.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Roy, you're in touch with people in the workplace. You encounter them presumably in your work. Do you get a sense thatpeople are happier now than they used to be, before they had all these technological tools, or are they less happy?

DAVID ROY: It's really a function of the corporate environment. We've heard a few of the other speakers mention electronic monitoring, and that certainly is a cause of great distress for some people at organizations that do monitor their employees. I think the real challenge is going to be how do we design these jobs and use technology as a tool to enhance human performance. And really the way to do that is to go back to, you know, what is the function of the human being? And really the human is in the center of all of this. It is not an afterthought. And I'll give you an example. We were doing some work for one of our clients, a large financial institution with 100,000 employees. They bought $13 million worth of computer technologies that included 19 inch monitors. That equipment was in a warehouse ready to be installed when they found out that the computer did not fit on the desk. That is an example of when two departments don't speak in an organization. Now imagine the impact if the human isn't considered in that equation as well.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Saffo, speaking of communication, are people actually communicating more with each other, or is it a different kind of communication? Is it as satisfying a kind of communication?

PAUL SAFFO: Well, I think the jury is out. The fact that people are using so much of this technology and communicating so much over the Internet means it is satisfying some sort of need, and especially the work being done out of the office is entirely voluntary. But I think it's a good thing.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Goldin, in the past, has there been a lag time between the time that an innovative technology is developed and the time - the time in which the work force can really take advantage or be comfortable with it?

CLAUDIA GOLDIN: There certainly is. And we have heard for the past 15 years computers are everywhere. And then the response is by many -- but where are they in the productivity numbers, because we have had a productivity slump for a fairly long period of time.

PHIL PONCE: So you're saying productivity is down now?

CLAUDIA GOLDIN: Productivity has been relatively low since 1973. In the past two years productivity has increased, but we're still not at the levels that we were at over the long-term before 1973. But we do have a very interesting piece of history. If we go back to the period of time that I just referred to, which was the electricity revolution - it could have been said in the nineteen teens electricity is all over the place, but it's not in the productivity numbers. By the 1920's it was in the productivity numbers.

PHIL PONCE: So you're saying that it can take a while, but the productivity wave makes itself evident?

CLAUDIA GOLDIN: That's right. And some of it just has to do, as one of the panelists said, in how we use technology, in technology itself. These products have their own life cycle. When we first got mass produced cars, you didn't put a key in the ignition and turn it to start it. You had to work very hard to start it.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Saffo, very quickly, as you look at the workplace of the future, what's going to be different in the next ten or fifteen years?

PAUL SAFFO: Well, the computers are going to become steadily less visible. The big boxes on the desk are going to start to disappear. The desks will stay, but people will spend less time at those desks. The devices are going to diffuse much farther out into the workplace than they have so far. Ten years from now we'll look back at amazement to think that anybody in the late 1990s thought that computers were important at all compared to what lay ahead.

PHIL PONCE: Well, I thank you all for joining us on this Labor Day. Thanks a lot.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, hard times in South Korea, a David Gergen dialogue, and a Robert Pinsky poem.% ? FOCUS - THE LITTLEST VICTIMS

JIM LEHRER: The South Korea story. The government-imposed economic austerity measures there almost a year ago as a condition of the International Monetary Fund's financial bailout. Ian Williams of Independent Television News reports on some unexpected fallout.

IAN WILLIAMS, ITN: These are the latest and youngest victims of Korea's financial crisis. Here they call them the IMF orphans, children put into care by parents who claim they can no longer afford to look after them. Eighteen of forty-four children in this orphanage alone. Behind the smiles, the tragic stories of families ripped apart by economic turmoil. Children like seven-year-old Yu-gene deposited here after her father's watch-making shop went out of business. And Jusang, whose father, on the run from creditors promised he'd be back for him.

INTERPRETER: He said, "Sleep here for 20 nights. Then we'll meet again."

IAN WILLIAMS: But that was in March. Byung-So, also seven, says he misses his parents playing with him. They left him here six months ago, so the orphanage would provide an education, which they could no longer afford.

BYUNG-SO, Orphan: [speaking through interpreter] After I finish learning how to read and write, when I'm eight, then I'll go home.

IAN WILLIAMS: This is one of forty-seven orphanages in Seoul. It was established for Korean War orphans. Now, most children here have parents who are still alive and for whom today's war is against poverty. The job of placing children in care falls on a special unit at city hall. They acknowledge that after a decade of decline, the numbers are rising sharply. Refusing to give precise figures, they reject suggestions that children are simply being abandoned.

LEE YUNG HEE, Seoul Official: [speaking through interpreter] I believe it is because of financial difficulties, but I want to make very clear that we are not a nation that abandons our children when times get tough. There is definitely a difference between putting children in temporary care and abandoning them.

IAN WILLIAMS: But those dealing directly with the children are not so charitable, criticizing parents they regard as irresponsible and selfish.

JAE-KWON KOH, Welfare Society: [speaking through interpreter] When parents leave their children in our care, they promised they'll work hard to get themselves back on their feet so they can pick up their kids as soon as possible. They also promised to come and visit once or twice a month. But when some don't even do that, I wonder whether they'll ever come back, even if their finances improve.

IAN WILLIAMS: Traditionally, family ties are very strong in Korea. But there's no meaningful welfare system. Most health and education has to be paid for. And even families who would never dream of abandoning their children acknowledge the strain of raising a family.

PARK JI-YOUNG, Mother: [speaking through interpreter] We tried to cut down as much as possible on things like clothes, going out to eat, and so on, basically cutting back on luxuries, but it's very difficult to cut down on spending that goes on your children.

IAN WILLIAMS: It is an enormously sensitive issue, one that provokes considerable shame and embarrassment. But many Koreans blame it less on the economic situation but on what they see as the erosion of traditional family values. It's taken Korea just 30 years to transform itself into a modern industrial nation. That's produced a confusing mix of opportunities and values. It appalls many older Koreans. They see a younger generation putting their own comfort and well-being above that of their family, a view shared by those working in this orphanage. With Korea facing mounting economic problems, they're bracing themselves for a new wave of IMF orphans.% ? DIALOGUE

JIM LEHRER: Now a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor-at-large of "U.S. News & World Report," engages Robert Woodson, author of the "The Triumphs of Joseph, How Today's Community Healers are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhoods."

DAVID GERGEN: Bob, you've spent some years now out on the streets and barrios talking to people, and you found what you call community healers, who are providing an approach to poverty that in your view is not only better but is vastly different from what we know. Tell us about them.

ROBERT WOODSON, Author, "The Triumphs of Joseph:" Well, Leon Watkins is a community healer in South Central Los Angeles. The East Side Cryps gang was just terrorizing the neighborhood, forcing business and small business owners to leave food and money in the backs of their stores, graffiti all over the place. He posted "help wanted" signs all over the community for the leader of this gang, and then he met him one night in the back alley, two cars pull up, a fellow comes out, a gun in his waistband. Leon's walking by himself. He says, I heard you're looking for me. He says, what do you want? He says, I want to talk to you about your life. They sat on the trash can for three hours and talked. Within two weeks he had this young man in Bible study and within four weeks the whole gang had stopped fighting, and they began to work on behalf of their community. The power of one man, one healing agent, is an example of what is possible to accomplish.

DAVID GERGEN: How about Freddie Garcia, in San Antonio?

ROBERT WOODSON: San Antonio, Texas. Pastor Garcia and his wife, Nintha, were 30 years ago drug addicts, failed all of the psychiatric interventions, and came to Christ, and then turned their own lives and then their homes into a haven for drug addicts and took into their homes people that everyone else gave up on, and in the past 30 years they have sheltered over 13,500 hard core drug addicts, thieves, and cutthroats, an 80 percent success rate at a cost of $50 a day. They have para churches in 68 communities throughout this nation and foreign countries, starting with just a person of faith.

DAVID GERGEN: So these healers are people who have had terrible problems in their lives, prison perhaps, drugs, prostitution, and they've often found religious faith. And then they've become what's called modern day Josephs.

ROBERT WOODSON: They really have. They have transformed. They haven't been rehabilitated. They've been transformed, because when you rehabilitate someone, you take them back to their previous state. But when a person's heart has been transformed, then they become a new person. And you take a rehabilitated person, put him into a debilitated environment, they become a recidivist. You take a transformed person, put him into a debilitated environment, they change the environment. And that's what's unique about these healing agents.

DAVID GERGEN: Why do you call them Josephs?

ROBERT WOODSON: Because when I was looking for a proper perspective to present this to the public and to understand it myself, I found it in the Book of Genesis, the story of Joseph. Joseph, as you know, is betrayed by his 12 brothers and sold into slavery, and they faked his death, and they were sold to the Ishmaelites and then went to the House of Pontify in Egypt, where he became the best slave, the best servant. He was falsely accused of attempted rape, thrown into jail, where he became the best prisoner. And when Pharaoh had dreams that none of his magicians and religious leaders could interpret, they called upon this 31 year old Hebrew boy, who interpreted his dreams, and Pharaoh appointed him overseer of Egypt and Joseph said, "I prospered and became fruitful in the land of my oppressor," and Egypt reined and ruled for 400 years until there arose a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph. I see in the person of Joseph someone who was in despair but not of despair, and a lot of my grassroots leaders who have been from horrible backgrounds, who've been falsely accused, who have stumbled and have been broken, but they refused to become a victim. Circumstances do not create victims. Victims create victims. And so, like Joseph, they have risen above their circumstance and refused to allow the external challenges in life to destroy them, and so they use their ability to be transformed as a beacon to others. And so they have beckoned others to responsibility.

DAVID GERGEN: Your book suggests very heavily - in fact, it really says that you've been swimming upstream, trying to make this argument in some parts of the black community and, indeed, some parts of the white community.

ROBERT WOODSON: It is. You have to understand that in the past 35 years we have defined America's crisis as essentially racial and because of poverty, and as a consequence, we have spent about $5.3 trillion in the last 35 years on programs to aid the poor. 80 percent of it goes not to the poor, for those who serve poor people. They ask not which problems are solvable but which ones are fundable. So poverty and the poor really represent a commodity, so there are perverse incentives for maintaining people in poverty. So the people who serve poor people, who profit from that, see me as a threat. And you also have what I call racial grievance merchants, people who really market racial division and racial despair, because they can profit from it also, and so I have challenged these two groups, and I pray the price for it.

DAVID GERGEN: Do you honestly believe that they don't - they care so little about changing the conditions of people in poverty that they are willing to overlook success stories?

ROBERT WOODSON: Well, Diedrich Bonhoffer, very interesting, in his letters from prison, made a very interesting point. When he says that the worst phenomena to challenge is not malice because malice can be confronted with violence, it is folly - is when someone really acts with benevolent intentions but has malevolent consequences. So a lot of the people, yes, are greedy, and they're acting in corrupt ways, but most of them aren't. They're well meaning, good people, but they operate institutions that causes good people to do bad things. And so I think it was Thurow that said when someone comes to you with your best interest at heart, run for your life. And so many of these people actually injure with the helping hand, and they don't even realize what they're doing.

DAVID GERGEN: Where do you find your best allies?

ROBERT WOODSON: It's very interesting. I find allies among many reconstructed liberals, people who were veterans of the civil rights movement and veterans of the poverty industry but who realized that what they have been doing isn't working and are truly seeking alternatives and also among some reconstructed conservatives who indulge in what I - what Dr. King says that the strength of any nation or individual can be determined in part by that person's willingness to be self-critical, that self-criticism is the highest form of maturity. And the people that I find most helpful are those who are able to look inside of themselves and forget their pasts and move into new directions.

DAVID GERGEN: You mentioned Mayor Steve Goldsmith of Indianapolis as an example of someone who has been innovative in this regard.

ROBERT WOODSON: When Mayor Goldsmith came into office, the first thing he did was set about privatizing public service, so he turned over control of six parks to local black churches so that the young people can be hired by contract. Not only is the work being done more efficiently, but also there's a sense of ownership in the community so people don't vandalize it, crime is down in those areas. He's also privatized parts of public transit, so he is truly an innovator but who's always trying to find ways. He has something called a front porch alliance, where churches and non-profits are coming together with business leaders to try to find ways of involving the faith community in the revitalization of the neighborhood. And there's some people who don't like that.

DAVID GERGEN: Robert Woodson, I wish we could go on. Thank you.

ROBERT WOODSON: Thank you, Dave.% ? FINALLY - LABOR DAY

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, some Labor Day poetry. NewsHour contributor Robert Pinsky, the Poet Laureate of the United States, reads his poem, "Shirt."

ROBERT PINSKY: "Shirt." "The back, the yoke, the yardage, lapped seams, the nearly invisible stitches along the collar turned in a sweat shop by Koreans or Malaysians gossiping over tea and noodles on their break, or talking money or politics while one fitted this arm piece with its overseam to the band of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter, the wringer, the mangle, the needle, the union, the treadle, the bobbin, the code. The infamous blaze at the triangle factory in 1911, 146 died in the flames on the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes -- The witness in a building across the street who watched how a young man helped a girl to step up to the window sill, then held her out away from the masonry wall and let her drop, and then another, as if he were helping them up to enter a streetcar and not eternity. A third, before he dropped her, put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Then he held her into space and dropped her. Almost at once he stepped to the sill himself, his jack flared and fluttered up from his shirt as he came down, air filling up the legs of his gray trousers, like Hart Crane's Bedlamite,, shrill shirt ballooning. Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked corners of both pockets like a strict rhyme or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks, houndstooth, tattersall, madras. The clan Tartans invented by mill owners, inspired by the hoax of Ossian to control their savage Scottish workers tamed by a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor, Bailey, McMartin, the kilt devised for workers to wear among dusty, clattering looms, weavers, carders, spinners, the loader, the docker, the navvy, the planter, the picker, the sorter sweating at her machine in the litter of cotton as slaves in calico head rags sweated in fields. George Herbert, your descendant is a black lady in South Carolina. Here name is Irma, and she inspected my shirt - its color and fit and feel and its clean smell have satisfied both her and me. We have culled its cloth and quality down to the buttons of simulated bone, the buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters printed in black on neck band and tails, the shape, the label, the labor, the color, the shade, the shirt. % ? RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this holiday Monday a Canadian submarine detected a signal from a cockpit voice recorder of Swissair Flight 111. The plane crashed Wednesday in the Atlantic Ocean off Nova Scotia, killing all aboard. Russia's parliament refused for a second time to confirm President Yeltsin's choice for prime minister, and in baseball Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals hit a homerun, tying Roger Maris's homerun record of 61. Have a nice holiday evening. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.